Bedtime tale
by fairytailsbluepanda
Summary: Bedtime is always a time for stories and when one little girl wishes to find out an answer to a question it leads to an answer she wasn't quite expecting.


**Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters or story lines in Fairy Tail that right goes to Hiro Mashima the only thing I own is the idea for this story.**

* * *

"Mommy, how did you meet Daddy?" The little girl asked, staring up at her mother with large expectant eyes. She knew the story, of course, it was her favourite one to be told before bedtime, she never got tired of hearing it.

"You know that story off by heart already, Sweetheart." Her mother giggled, smiling kindly at her child. "Why don't you think of another story you'd like to hear about, that include your Daddy and Mommy?"

"A different story..." The blonde haired girl trailed off as she tried to think up a different story that she'd like to hear about her parents. That would be a tough choice as she only really thought about how her mother and father had met, nothing else. She didn't even know how they fell in love... "I want to hear the story about how you and daddy fell in love."

"How your dad and I fell in love, hey?" She responded, tilting her head to the side lost in thought. "Hmmm, well okay then, if you're sure."

"I am, I am." Came the excited reply. Now that she'd asked the question, and her mind was starting to think up answers to it, the little girl found her excitement bubbling up. Why had she never asked for this story before?!

"Well, you know how I meet your father." The older woman replied. To which the child nodded her head, curled up on her mother's lap and waited expectantly for the tale to begin. "Hmm, I think it was about 6 months...I mean 7 years after that time, that we met up while on a job."

"What job?" The child interjected, starting to bounce around on her mother's knee.

"If you'd just hush and listen then you'd find out." She laughed and bopped the little one's nose gently.

"Okay." Came the pouted reply. Shaking her head at the adorable antics of her off spring, the woman began to tell the story again.

"Ever since I'd joined my guild, there was a job I'd take each month for some extra cash. You see my teammates were notorious for destroying everything in their wake when they fought, so it would make earning money rather hard. I'd take this simple job that I could do alone, to help keep my head above water, so to speak. It only paid about 20,000 jewels but it was enough to cover food or to top up my rent fund." She chuckled fondly at the memories of her younger days.

"Anyway," She said getting back on point. "I would go all over magnolia visiting different orphanages. The job was to go and teach the children in each orphanage about magic, the different types, their application in society and about the guilds. It was perfect for me, as each of my spirits uses a unique magic which many different mages also use. But one day I bumped into your dad at one of the orphanages, turned out he, too, had taken the job request and that day we'd been sent to the same place."

"Was it love at second sight?" Chirped the child, stars in her eyes at the idea of a fairy tale-like love story for her parents.

"No, nothing like that." Her mum replied with a shake of her head, her little girl looked crushed at the fact her dream scenario had just been squashed. "To be honest, I'd always thought your father was handsome but he was a playboy so that had put me off the idea of dating him."

"So, what changed your mind?"

"Well it wasn't changed over night, but during that job we both worked together using our magic to show the children how different magics could compliment each other and work together. First off your dad used his telepathy magic to link everyone together mentally...which didn't go down too well as some of the boys used it to peak into the girls heads and visa versa. Then I summoned out Aries and Capricorn to show off their combo skills, which went down a lot better but poor Aries ended up making everyone a fluffy woolen stool to sit on." This made the girl giggle, as it, too, was a favourite thing to do whenever her mother called out the shy ram spirit.

"Then Capricorn decided to give the entire orphanage a class in etiquette, which the Father and Sister that ran the home were very appreciative of. So, that gave me and your father some time to chat and catch up, which went well enough. I mean we had gotten on well on our joint mission to destroy Nirvana, and had kept in contact afterwards even if it was only a little. You see, when you go on requests, it's highly likely you will run into wizards from other guilds who have taken the same job as you. Its more common with s-class jobs but still happens on the lower ones, too. People don't just send the request to one specific guild unless they know that that guild has a wizard with exactly the right requirements that they desire."

The attentive listener nodded her head, she loved to hear about how the guilds operated and her mother usually slipped in useful information about them into her stories because she knew it would hold the little girl's attention more. "Did you and dad started dating from then on?"

"Oh, heavens no!" Her mother laughed, giving the child a squeeze. "But the Father and Sister who were in charge of that particular orphanage were so impressed by the lesson we gave that day, they recommended to the employer that we both do the magic lesson together from then on. Which was accepted and approved, then each month after that we'd meet up a few days before our scheduled job to plan the lesson and somehow we ended up talking more each time, enjoying each others company more and more and eventually your dad asked me to go to dinner with him."

"Then what happened?"

"Well, the first date didn't exactly go to plan." Her mother chuckled, recalling the disastrous events that had taken place.

"How so?"

"Let's just say your uncle Natsu and Aunty Erza followed me with the rest of Fairy Tail to spy and it turned into a disaster zone. I was surprised your daddy even asked for a second date after how badly the first one went."

The little girl merely stared with big, doe eyes at the idea of the chaos that must have happened. "So they were always like that?

"Who?" Her mother replied, she had been slightly lost in her memories. "Do you mean your Aunties and Uncles from Fairy Tail?"

"Yes."

"Yes, they always were." The woman chuckled. "Even before I joined them. I'm sure I must have told you that before."

"Um hum," The child nodded, remembering the hilarious tales her mother would tell her after she returned home from her various jobs. She'd never realized before that the guild her mother belonged to had always been so brash and brazen. "Oh mummy?"

"Yes darling?"

"What's a playboy?" She chirped, curious as to what the term meant and why her mother would refer to her father as one. Her mother coughed lightly and shook her head, amazed at the way her daughters mind worked at times.

"It means that your father was a bit of a ladies man before we got together," She smiled and tucked a stray strand of hair back behind her baby's ear.

"But daddy loves you." Was the simple, yet confused, reply.

"Yes he does and I love daddy too. Now do you want to hear the end of the story?"

"Yes please." The young blonde yawned and rubbed her eyes. She was starting to feel extremely sleepy and desperately wanted to know the end of the tale before her mind wander into the land of dreams.

"When your dad asked for a second date I was speechless," Her mother restarted the story again. "I mean I'd resigned myself to the fact that after the train wreck that was our first date no man would ever consider going back for a second round of torture. But he did, though we decided to keep this date a tight lipped secret so that we could avoid the drama, if at all possible. Which we somehow managed, even though I still to this day have no clue to how we managed that miracle."

Her child's blue eyes stared up at her in tired amusement, probably because the way things played out in reality differed drastically from the event she'd probably envisioned in her young mind. But that is the way of life, fairy tale romances never truly work out and in fact it can be the most simple and generic tales that have the true romantic ending. The elder of the two smiled down at the younger, she had never thought her romance would have turned out the way it did or that she would have fallen for the man she had come to be married too. When she was a child she had dreamed of marrying a prince and living in a castle by the sea, but now that she was older she released that you didn't need a crown to be royalty and a happy home was better than any cold breezy castle.

"It was during that date that your dad asked me to become his official girlfriend, even though I was hesitant at first, I decided I liked him too much to let my doubts stop me from possibly finding love." She smiled a bright blush creeping onto her cheeks.

"It wasn't like a fairy tale romance then?"

"I'm afraid not, sweety." She reaffirmed to her child. "But it better than a book in my mind, and is still going."

"What do you mean?" The girl cocked her head to the side in confusion.

"The romance hasn't stopped." She chuckled. "I'm still falling in love with your daddy more and more. It wasn't like I fell in love then stopped loving him. I still to this day love him and enjoy every moment I spend with him. And through that I came to have you and I love you now too." She squished her daughter in a cute hug and kissed her cheek.

"Mommy?"

"Yes?"

"Do you even remember when you fell in love with daddy?" She yawned, resting her head on her mother's lap. This often happened when the two blondes got to the evening story before bed, the stories could sometimes get wibbly wobbly and totally off topic or would sometimes end miles away from where it started. Both enjoyed the way it would go and didn't mind at all at times, the true enjoyment was had in the time they spent together.

"Of course I do." The woman beamed, her hazel eyes sparkly. "It was on my birthday, your dad turned up at my apartment out of the blue, holding a bag full of my favourite food, my favourite movie and a bottle of wine. We spent the entire night talking, laughing and being silly curled up on my sofa and it just hit me as I looked at him after a particularly funny joke...I loved him, he meant so much to me.

"That's cool." The little one smiled, imagining the scene of her parents sat together in an apartment both laughing and being together. Not exactly the Cinderella scenario she'd always believed but in a way it was so much better and it fit her parents to a T.

"So did you like that story?" She inquired, worried that she'd bored the little girl or that she wouldn't like the way the story went as it was just a simple story of two people slowly falling in love.

"Yeah, it was very mummy and daddy." She beamed, shifting her weight around as her arm had gone dead in her previous one. "But it was a great story."

"Do you have a story you'd like to hear tomorrow night?" Her mother inquired, trying to get a head start so she could remember the events correctly for the next evening. Tonight's story had been a little all over the place.

"How was I made?"

"That is a story for another day." Her mother replied, her cheeks flushed a light pink making her even prettier than she normally looked. A soft chuckle radiated into the room causing both mother and daughter to look towards the bedroom door.

"Daddy, you're home!" The younger blonde cried out in happiness, bouncing off the bed and diving head first at her father, her earlier drowsiness forgotten. He'd been away on an especially hard mission lately and had been absent for roughly 2 weeks. Much to the little girl's dismay, she missed her father dearly when he wasn't around and was constantly worried that he would never return to them again. She felt the same when her mother left on jobs, but even though she was young she still understood that this was what it meant to be a mage.

"I missed you, Layla." The man smiled hugging his daughter tight to his chest. Before gazing over at his beautiful wife. "I missed you too, Lucy."

"Welcome home, Hibiki." Lucy beamed walking over to give her husband a kiss and share in the family reunion embrace.


End file.
